aras diler

roald dahl had a weird talent for making children's stories feel magical and slightly disturbing at the same time.

charlie and the chocolate factory, matilda, the bfg, the witches. his stories were funny, dark, cruel, imaginative, and usually very suspicious of adults.

probably why they still feel different from most children's books. image

the bmw i8 still feels like a car that arrived 10 or 15 years too early. it came out in 2014 and somehow still looks gorgeous today. the design barely aged at all. my only issue is that i wish bmw had gone all in and made it fully electric instead of a plug in hybrid. it already looked like the future. the powertrain should have felt just as futuristic. imageimage

basically the banker behind emperors.

fugger made his fortune through mining, trade, and lending money to europe's most powerful families. in 1519, he personally financed around two thirds of the money used to support charles v's election as holy roman emperor.

but my favorite detail is what survived him.

in 1521 he founded the fuggerei in augsburg, now considered the world's oldest social housing complex still in use.

around 150 people still live there today.

annual rent: €0.88.

the other requirement is three prayers a day for the fugger family.

five hundred years later, one of the richest men of the renaissance is still technically somebody's landlord. image

one of the few celebrities who kept speaking up about gaza when so many others stayed quiet.

she has consistently used her platform to talk about palestinian children and humanitarian aid, which honestly makes me respect her even more.

and on top of all that, she is basically a superhero in my house because my daughter absolutely loves her. image

for a vacation, it’s hard to beat turkey. you spend a week or two seeing the best parts of the country and eating amazing food.

but when you are turkish and live abroad, there’s something strange about going back. people don’t really treat you like a local anymore. they see you as someone who’s just visiting, who’ll be leaving again soon, and you can feel it in the way they treat you.

you are coming home, but to everyone else, you’re just passing through. image

the university where we buried my daughter’s umbilical cord in the garden. image image

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people really underestimate american food. you always hear that the u.s. does not have great cuisine, but honestly, american bbq is some of the best food in the world.

and speaking of bbq, terry black's was one of the best meals i've ever had in my life.

the line was around 30 to 40 minutes, but completely worth it.

i paid about $150 for this tray three years ago. imageimage

america's mythical rabbit with antlers.

the funny part is that nature occasionally gets surprisingly close. a real virus can cause rabbits to grow hard, hornlike keratin growths around their heads. so the jackalope is fake, but biology apparently liked the idea. image

this story is honestly hard to believe.

thousands of world war i veterans went to washington in 1932 because the great depression had left many of them broke, and they wanted the government to pay their promised war bonuses early.

instead, the army was eventually sent in to clear them out.

so you had american soldiers, under douglas macarthur, moving against american veterans who had already fought for the country. camps were burned, tear gas was used, and people were injured.

there is something especially ugly about asking people to risk their lives for a country, then treating them like a problem when they come back poor and desperate. imageimage

i’ve tried all kinds of meat in different cities and countries, including organ meats prepared in all kinds of ways.

but this summer, i had the best meat i’ve ever tasted in my life. image

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we had a ton of them, box after box, when i was a kid, and my older brother would build magnificent things and not let me touch them, or i wouldn't dare touch them next to the stuff he'd made. as time went by, at 34, i started building with a gift from my dear wife and realized how much i love it. it's incredible therapy for me. image image image image

donald trump's involvement and impact are scandalous and disgusting. image

the best lake on earth. imageimage